Widespread adoption of social media has made it possible for any individual to rapidly communicate with an audience of thousands (see the List of Incorporated Cited Literature References, Literature Reference No. 1). Unlike traditional media, where several difficult time-consuming steps must be carried out prior to publication, information in social media becomes publicly available within a few seconds of its creation.
With regards to existing social media analysis systems, red24 (red24 plc, Berkshire, UK http://www.red24.com taken on Jun. 2, 2014) is a crisis management assistance system, developed by a company by the same name, which provides security and risk assessment services to its clients. red24's system relies heavily on interaction by highly trained staff and is limited by the amount of data a few humans can process daily. Similarly, Dataminr (http://www.dataminr.com taken on Jun. 2, 2014), developed by Dataminr, Inc. of New York, N.Y., is a real-time social media analytics company with a mission to extract value from social media for clients in the finance and government sectors. Dataminr is limited by the coverage and accuracy of its geocoding approach.
Thus, a continuing need exists for a system for automatic detection of civil unrest events using a geocoding approach with high accuracy.